Archival backup of CDs

Rob Babcock · « **on:** 28 Jul 2003, 02:08 am »

I was planning to make a CD-R copy of every CD I have, probably using Mitsui discs. My thinking is to just stack them alphabetically in cakeboxs and put em in the closet. If I ever damage a disc or have it stolen, I'd retain a bit-perfect backup. Now to be totally legal, I guess if I ever sold a disc I've have to discard the backup, too...

At any rate, I have some discs that would be difficult to replace, if not totally impossible. I'd have probably never seriously thought about doing it back in the dark ages before I got a burner in the PC and Nero Express.

Has anyone else done this, made a copy of every disc for safekeeping?

I guess you could take it to the next level and store the discs in a safe deposit box at the bank, providing you had a bigger box. That would be good insurance against a fire.

Marbles · « **Reply #1 on:** 28 Jul 2003, 02:18 am »

I wouldn't copy all of mine...just the ones I really liked.

Great idea though.....

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #2 on:** 28 Jul 2003, 02:57 am »

How many do ya got, Marbles? I've got about 750, so that would be a lot of Mitsui's, especially since the best price I've seen in about 50 cents each. So I'd be talking like $350's. Of course, you could do it over time. Hell, I wouldn't wanna be hunched over the keyboard burning 750 CD-Rs all at one crack!

I could probably combine some, where two by the same band would fit on on 80 min disc. That would work well with some of my older stuff.

Marbles · « **Reply #3 on:** 28 Jul 2003, 03:04 am »

Quote from: Rob Babcock

How many do ya got, Marbles?

I honestly don't know, but it would be in the 500 - 1000 range.

Don't make count them as the number was never and is never important to me. It seems I really only like about 10-20 at any one time..and those can change from day to day

Woodsea · « **Reply #4 on:** 28 Jul 2003, 03:04 am »

With DVD copiers on the decline in price, you can just burn them onto an 1/8th of total disc space. Also you could just buy a 180 gig HD on the cheap as well as well and stow that away!

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #5 on:** 28 Jul 2003, 03:34 am »

Sure, I suppose you could use a DVD burner. But I don't yet own one, and they lack the universal compatibility of a CD-R. Plus the blanks are a little spendier, although obviously you wouldn't need as many.

I wouldn't want my only archival backup to be on a mechanical drive. And again, that's an expense I'd have to pay up front, whereas I could do a spindle of CD-R's at a time.

Mostly I just like the idea of being able to just drop them into any CD player.

Marbles: I'm not real hung up on numbers except that it seems like I'm always struggling with where to put em. I count 'em occasionally (not an exact count- I count one or two rows and multiply by how many rows I have) to see how many will fit on my rack.

When I built my last DVD rack I had to careful count my collection and calculate the space I'd need, leaving reasonable room for growth. DVD wise my new rack will hold maybe 150 more than the 350 I've got now. CD wise I think my CD rack would hold maybe 200 more discs before I'll have to think of something else.

I'd start burning just my favorites, but I'd have trouble keeping track I suppose. When I do it I'll probably just start with "A Ha" and go alphabetically. (Ooops...did I just admit I own A ha?

I mean 'ACCEPT'!

).

bubba966 · « **Reply #6 on:** 28 Jul 2003, 09:17 am »

Rob, I think you've got it a little bass ackwards...

Wouldn't you want to burn a disc, then keep the original as the backup while the copy is your everyday use copy?

I've know people that've done that as they lost, had stolen, or ruined discs on a frequent enough basis. They found it more than useful to use copies rather than the originals.

Jay S · « **Reply #7 on:** 28 Jul 2003, 09:19 am »

Quote from: bubba966

Wouldn't you want to burn a disc, then keep the original as the backup while the copy is your everyday use copy?

I think this would be the way to go, particularly if the copies sound better than the originals.

Carlman · « **Reply #8 on:** 28 Jul 2003, 12:31 pm »

Quote from: Jay S

I think this would be the way to go, particularly if the copies sound better than the originals.

Maybe I'm the only one but, I haven't found this to be true... I've heard a difference but, I wouldn't say it was better; just different.

Other considerations:
How long do CD-R copies last? Original CD's seem to start pitting after a while if they weren't manufactured well. Do CD-R's pit, decay, or otherwise fall apart after a while?

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #9 on:** 28 Jul 2003, 10:27 pm »

In normal use I do use a lot of CD-Rs. The backup in cake boxes will be above and beyond and normal CD-R use. You do have a point tho, Brian. But I never take a CD out of the house and I never lend one out. I'll copy something for a friend, but I won't allow a CD out of my place.

I'm with Carlman, so far. I've not yet determined for myself whether the copy is as good as, the same as, or better than the original. I'm not calling it Urban Legend yet, but I haven't heard it conclusively, either.

bubba966 · « **Reply #10 on:** 28 Jul 2003, 11:51 pm »

I've know a few people that've had a good amount of CD's stolen that were in their car. Or they've had them in a book and lost them somewhere. A friend of mine left a book of 80-100 CD's (originals) on the roof of his car one night because he'd had a few and didn't remember to grab them before he got in. Needless to say he never took another original out of the house before.

Rob,

So you're telling me that you keep your originals at home. Take CD-R's out for car and other uses. Yet you still would care to make an additional backup on top of that?

I suppose if you've got more than a few things that are hard/impossible to replace it's not a bad idea. Might also be helpfull if the insurance company decides not to give you enough $ towards replacing them.

I guess you need to find a pallet rate for Mitsui's...

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #11 on:** 29 Jul 2003, 12:10 am »

Maybe that is paranoid on my part, but my thinking is that the CD is on it's last lap (okay, no arguements over the commercial future of the CD for the moment!); whether DVD-A, SACD, MP3, or some other format replaces it, it will be replaced eventually. I can forsee the time when many of the discs I have will be impossible to replace. And I do have some rare-ish CDs that exhibit pinholing. I already can't find all of them, nor would I necessarily buy "Venom" again if it rotted out!

You'll really think this is nuts, then. I've been contemplating buying a bunch of those jewel cases that are regular thickness but hold 2 discs: I'd then put all my CDs in those cases along with all the original art, but include a CD-R copy to actually use.

Crazy?

bubba966 · « **Reply #12 on:** 29 Jul 2003, 12:16 am »

Who am I to say if you're crazy or not? If that's what you'd care to do, then do it.

I know a lot of people call me crazy after they hear some of the prices I've paid for movies on LD (or even what I've paid for a few DVD's). But that's what I want to do.

Actually, the double disc, single thickness thing sounds kinda cool. If I had any CD's I'd probably do something similar...

Thump553 · « **Reply #13 on:** 29 Jul 2003, 12:56 pm »

I listen to a lot of CDs in my car. My wife and children do not treat CDs with the most careful of treatment. Putting a cd back in a case is care above and beyond. Actually putting it back in the correct case is coincidental more often than not.

They wore me down. Rather than stress and nag over the situation I've been burning a copy of every CD I buy and let that be the "circulation" copy. I tend to use Fujis, which can be bought dirt cheap (six cents each this week at CompUSA) and are TY manufactured.

I haven't made any effort to back up the entire collection though. It would be quite a task even at 3 minutes per disc.

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #14 on:** 29 Jul 2003, 06:10 pm »

"Actually putting it back in the correct case is coincidental more often than not. "

I hear ya, Thump 553.

I used to have roommates like that in college. That is a good idea, just using only burned discs from day to day. I don't have the problem with people abusing my CDs anymore, luckily.

Even my 750 CDs would take weeks, maybe months, to back up. I'll just have to start with a few and keep at it.

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #15 on:** 29 Jul 2003, 06:15 pm »

BTW, my brother did go the route of ripping his entire collection onto the hard drive of his computer at 320 kbps. It takes up about 40 GB of space, and it seems like he worked on it 12 hours a day on his days off for a couple weeks. Of course, he kept all the originals.

I know of guys who've ripped their collection and then sold the originals!

That just mystifies me; have those lucky bastards never had a drive crash? Setting aside the dicey ethics of that type of "cake and eat it" mentality, don't they ever want to look at the album art, read the lyrics, or see who played what or who had guest appearances?

Mag · « **Reply #16 on:** 29 Jul 2003, 10:56 pm »

I bought a new 120Gb hard drive and loaded all my music onto it. Very time consuming. A week later the %$%& crashed(defective) and lost all my music, my life flashed before my eyes.I didn't want tolive anymore.

Now I have a backup for everything that's on the hard drive.
I like the convenience of being able to queue up any song in a matter of seconds. But most of my stuff is in wav format. However 120 is not quite large enough to have everything stored this way.
Mag

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #17 on:** 30 Jul 2003, 01:11 am »

Geez, I feel for ya', Mag. I mostly use WAV files, too; I mostly just play around w/MP3 at this point. Using NERO is does take quite awhile to rip a disc onto the HD. I'd blow my top if I spent all that time and then had it crash!

But that's why I'd never have a HD as my main backup to my CDs.

I do want to do the music server thing. I'll admit that any changer seems pretty quaint compared to the organizational power and convenience of using ones PC as a jukebox. Witchdoctor was just saying a few days ago on this site that he doesn't even use his CDs any more (he has a PC running MusicMatch Jukebox using 320 mbps MP3s feeding a GW Labs upsampler running into a modded ART DI/O- he says it sounds great).

Just got my first batch of Mitsui discs today, so I'll be doin' a little burnin'!

Redbeard · « **Reply #18 on:** 1 Aug 2003, 02:08 am »

I am surprised to hear that you use/plan to use Nero. I had miserable results with it, and changed over to EAC (Exact Audio Copy).

EAC was a royal PITA to set up, but it will give you an EXACT copy of the original, assuming you have set it up correctly, and use it correctly. EAC shines when it comes to recovering tracks that have ECC errors, whereas Nero just plugs along and doesn't even know that errors have occurred. Yes, ripping CDs takes a long time, but I usually don't sit around waiting for it to finish.
-dave-

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #19 on:** 1 Aug 2003, 02:55 am »

I've used Nero for ages; the new version is excellent. Discs burned with Nero Express sound great and I prefer the user interface to everything I've tried so far. What problems have you had? It's been a paradigm of reliability for me.